The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [135]
"Merlin. I thought -- I thought -- "
"Well met, cousin, I was coming to look for you."
He said quickly: "Look, I swear I had no idea who those men were -- "
"I know that. What happened wasn't your fault. That isn't why I was looking for you."
" -- and I was drunk, you know that. But even if I had guessed who they were, how was I to know they'd take you up on a thing like that? I'd heard rumours of what they were looking for, I admit, but I swear it never entered my head -- "
"I said it wasn't your fault. And I'm back here again safely, aren't I? All's well that ends well. Leave it, Dinias. That wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about."
But he persisted. "I took the money, didn't I? You saw."
"And if you did? You didn't give information for money, you took it afterwards. It's different, to my mind. If Vortigern likes to throw his money away, then by all means rob him of it. Forget it, I tell you. Have you news of my mother?"
"I've just come from there. She's ill, did you know?"
"I got news on my way south," I said. "What's the matter with her? How bad?"
"A chill, they told me, but they say she's on the mend. I thought myself she still looked poor enough, but she was fatigued with the journey, and anxious about you. What did Vortigern want you for, in the end?"
"To kill me," I said briefly.
He stared, then began to stutter. "I -- in God's name, Merlin, I know you and I have never been...that is, there've been times -- " He stopped, and I heard him swallow. "I don't sell my kinsmen, you know."
"I told you I believed you. Forget it. It was nothing to do with you, some nonsense of his soothsayers'. But as I said, here I am safe and sound."
"Your mother said nothing about it."
"She didn't know. Do you think she'd have let him send her tamely home if she had known what he meant to do? The men who brought her home, they knew, you can be sure of that. So they didn't let it out to her?"
"It seems not," said Dinias. "But -- "
"I'm glad of that. I'm hoping to get to see her soon, this time in daylight."
"Then you're in no danger now from Vortigern?"
"I would be, I suppose," I said, "if the place was still full of his men, but I was told at the gate that they've cleared out to join him?"
"That's so. Some rode north, and some east to Caer-Guent. You've heard the news, then?"
"What news?"
Though there was nobody else in the street, he looked over his shoulder in the old, furtive way. I slid down out of the saddle, and threw the reins to Cadal. "What news?" I repeated.
"Ambrosius," he said softly. "He's landed in the southwest, they say, and marching north. A ship brought the story yesterday, and Vortigern's men started moving out straight away. But -- if you've just ridden in from the north, surely you'd meet them?"
"Two companies, this morning. But we saw them in good time, and got off the road. We met my mother's escort the day before, at the crossways."
" 'Met'?" He looked startled. "But if they knew Vortigern wanted you dead -- "
"They'd have known I had no business riding south, and cut me down? Exactly. So we cut them down instead. Oh, don't look at me like that -- it wasn't magician's work, only soldiers'. We fell in with some Welsh who were on their way to join Ambrosius, and we ambushed Vortigern's troop and cut them up."
"The Welsh knew already? The prophecy, was it?" I saw the whites of his eyes in the dusk. "I'd heard about that...the place is buzzing with it. The troops told us. They said you'd showed them some kind of great lake under the crag -- it was that place we stopped at years ago, and I'll swear there was no sign of any lake then -- but there was this lake of water with dragons lying in it under the foundations of the tower. Is it true?"
"That I showed them a lake, yes."
"But the dragons. What were they?"
I said, slowly: "Dragons. Something conjured out of nothing for them to see, since